Final Thoughts on MOOCs

Returning to my first post of the semester was a thought-provoking experience for me.  While I can’t say that I disagree with my definitions of MOOCs, I believe in the time of the semester both my knowledge of MOOCs and the entire MOOC phenomenon has changed in a way that my post would definitely be substantially expanded.  I still look to the future of MOOCs with guarded optimism, for both the MOOC experience and any sort of “disruption” they may cause in the education sphere.  As MOOCs continue to permeate society (hey, even my mom knows what a MOOC is now!), I still tend to believe that they may contribute to some change within education, but will not be a driving force.  However, even several months later, I think the jury is still out on that question.  MOOCs will continue to evolve, and hopefully those built with sound pedagogical principles can thrive rather than the monotonous lecture format some MOOC providers seem to embrace.  We can hope, right?

Reflecting on my personal effort, I have found this course to be both interesting and challenging in content matter and format.  I enjoyed my virtual interactions with my classmates and feel I got as much out of that as a face to face weekly course.  I did find twitter challenging for discussion, though I am becoming better at condensing my verbose nature into 140 characters.  I had not been on twitter seriously before this course, but started following a number of interesting people (beings? institutions?) related to the course and also in my general professional interests of ed tech and prospect research, so I will likely continue using twitter for keeping up with news and trends professionally.  At the beginning of the course I was excited about my impending MOOC experience, but it ended up being a bit of a dud.  The workload was too much for me with my other (for credit!) studies, and so I did not get as much out of it as I would have liked.  I do now know a number of MOOC resources, and I will continue to explore MOOCs in the future.  I thought that Dr. Major and the class had a great chemistry, and it was especially interesting to hear the thoughts of the diverse group of students.  Hopefully the instructional technology folks were not too overwhelming.
After this semester, I look forward to staying abreast on the developments surrounding MOOCs and how they shape the future of education.